No cell phones/electronic devices allowed in the building. I have to lock my phone in a locker on my way in. The only time I can carry my phone is when I'm walking around with a gun, and I usually can't look at my phone then.

During slow times (in jail, that means most of the time) Whitechapel has become my refuge. I'm blocked from seeing any video, and several links, and some pictures, but the heart of WC remains available to me, here, in this soul-deadening banal building. Seriously, being able to access Whitechapel from here has kept me sane. Losing it at work would be like going back to black and white after finally experiencing the joy of Technicolor.

I don't know if it's blocked or not, as I haven't tried - I just work in a role which has a number of dealings with the social networking policy and also the IT security team and I'm very much Supposed To Know Better.

Although I would never encourage or condone such things, here are methods I understand disreputable individuals use to get around such blocks. Keep in mind that nothing at work is truly secure to a paranoid enough employer, who may utilize full-screen recording, key loggers, or a camera aimed over your shoulder to monitor your working habits. Many of these options also assume you have reasonable Administrator privileges on your work machine. Security is generally "good enough to keep your sister out" or "good enough to keep the government out," and these all fall into the first category if you can't reasonably trust the machine you're using.

In order of difficulty -

- Cell phone - Easiest and most secure, but sometimes you just can't sit there hunched over a phone. - LogMeIn or GoToMyPC - securely log into your own home computer and do your browsing from there. All that shows up in firewall logs is that you went to the remote control site itself- Proxy servers - You can get a secure proxy service or run one on your home PC. Again, this will leave a trace, but casual inspection will just show data going to a single site. - Portable apps - Bring your own browser in on a USB stick just to be sure of your software. - LogMeIn Hamachi - This is an interesting service that sets up a VPN between two computers. You can use it in conjunction with a proxy running on your home network to securely tunnel your data.

If you're in a work environment where you need to regularly use nontrusted computers, say a university or training lab, then a good total solution is to use a combination of the above - Your own portable browser on a USB stick or stashed in the cloud somewhere for easy download, configured to use a secure proxy. Again, keep in mind that keystrokes or video can be recorded directly off a machine, so you're never 100% secure on an untrusted machine run by unscrupulous bosses. And in truly secure environments, you probably won't have the privileges to plug in a USB drive or install apps such as Hamachi or use a proxy.

"In breaking news, it has been determined that the USB drive used to introduce Stuxnet into Iran's nuclear plant was in fact intended to allow the user to bypass the plant's firewall, which was preventing the unnamed user from accessing the Whitechapel forum at work."

Whitechapel was blocked when I was working part of the week at a hostel for people with mental health issues. Mind you, so was access to information about drugs. Which is really helpful when some of the residents have drug issues and want to check out the local mushroom population. Fortunately, there were members of staff conversant enough in fungi fun to field that one...